Nineteen people were injured in France on Thursday night when a bus collided with a train it was about to board to travel through the Channel Tunnel. The prefecture of Pas-de-Calais said two of the bus passengers, who were lorry drivers whose vehicles were making the journey from France to the UK, were airlifted to hospital in Lille. Neither had life-threatening injuries, it added.
The collision occurred at 7.30pm local time along a departure platform for a Le Shuttle train. It was the first accident of its kind at the busy terminal in Coquelles, near the entry point to the Channel Tunnel, Agathe Cury, a local official, told reporters. When lorries travel through the tunnel on Le Shuttle, their drivers go through separately in a bus.
The driver of the bus involved in the accident was an employee of Getlink, operator of Le Shuttle. Dozens of firefighters and police were sent to the scene, resulting in a roughly 90-minute service interruption, Cury said. No information was disclosed about how or why the bus collided with the train.
A police investigation has been opened, the public prosecutor of Boulogne-sur-Mer told Agence-France Presse. Three rail services operate through the Channel Tunnel: Eurostar passenger trains, Le Shuttle, which transports vehicles, and freight trains which move goods. Getlink declined to comment.
Eurostar said in a statement that the incident “does not involve or impact Eurostar trains running from and to London. All Eurostar trains will run as expected”. Roughly 50km long, the Channel Tunnel has connected Coquelles near Calais to Folkestone in the UK since 1994.
Le Shuttle involves roughly 400 trains operating a drive-on, drive-off rail ferry each day for vehicles, according to Getlink. Last year, some 6,100 passenger cars and 3,100 heavy vehicles made the crossing daily.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing